A dog runs during a heavy storm Monday at the harbor of Timmendorf on the German island of Poel in the Baltic Sea. / Associated Press

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News Journal

Tuesday will be a fairly beautiful day for late October, with sunshine, seasonal high temperatures in the mid-50s and light winds, pretty much a carbon copy of Monday’s weather.

Changes are afoot, however, and will bring with them the likelihood of some tempestuous conditions, at least for a time. And the timing won’t be the best.

A ridge of high pressure currently over our region will make a beeline to the East Coast, opening the door for a vigorous storm system to affect our weather Wednesday and Thursday. A stationary front now to our south will change over to a warm front and approach us on Wednesday, bringing with it a chance for showers, becoming likely here by late Wednesday night.

The warm front will also usher in, naturally, warm temperatures. We’re expecting afternoon highs well up into the 60s for both Wednesday and Thursday, and that’s what could become problematic. If we get a dry slot at some point Thursday between the warm frontal showers and the rain associated with the cold front that will follow, our atmosphere could grow unstable.

There is already a 100 percent likelihood of rain for Thursday evening, coinciding with trick-or-treat for many people, but if things get unstable severe storms could become a threat during the period. High winds will be the biggest threat. If nothing else, we can say goodbye to a lot of fall foliage then.

The air behind the cold front that will finally move through here Thursday night is not expected to be appreciably colder, but the air behind another, lesser, front on Saturday will be. Sunday is looking like a relatively wintry day, at least temperature-wise.

But the cold won’t last this time. The long-range outlook for early November in the Midwest shows a period of above-normal temperatures becoming established, at least for a while.

Below are the weather statistics for Monday, Oct. 28, at my location 4 miles north-northwest of Fredericktown, Ohio: